In these current strange times of isolation and social distancing (with almost all events and conferences being cancelled), it can be quite difficult to feel connected to family, friends and colleagues. Here at Smashing, we believe that is is now more important than ever to stay in touch and support each other. Behind the scenes, the team is working tirelessly on ways to keep the community connected, and oh boy do we have a lot of things in store for you!

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/monthly-roundup-05-2020/

When it comes to informing the public about critical health issues, timing is everything. The information you consume today could save your life tomorrow. And with more than 65% of the population being visual learners — meaning they learn and remember best through visual communication — the job of creating and sharing accessible images has never been more important. This is especially true for public service announcements (PSAs) aimed at providing crucial and urgent information to the public.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/accessible-images/

We’re having a meetup! Join us for Smashing Meets — two free online meetups with speakers, activities, and plenty of chances to make new friends. Just like a real meetup, though you’ll need to bring your own pizza. What Will Happen At Smashing Meets? 3×30-mins interactive talks from experts, followed by a short Q&A. Interactive activities in breakout rooms, with friendly communities around the world and collaborative design and coding challenges.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/smashing-meets/

Styling React components over the years has improved and become much easier with various techniques and strategies. In this tutorial, we’re going to learn how to style React components using four major styling strategies — with examples on how to use them. In the process, I will explain the cons and pros of these styling strategies, and by the end of this tutorial, you’ll know all about styling React components and how they work along with the various methods that can be used for styling these components.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/styling-components-react/

You are a smart, well-informed person. After all, you are reading Smashing Magazine so you must be. That means you are probably already convinced that you should avoid dark patterns. Maybe you have even read the Ethical Design Handbook that drives the point home. However, just because we understand that we should avoid dark patterns, doesn’t mean our clients and colleagues do. No doubt you have been asked more than once to implement these questionable techniques by an ill-informed stakeholder.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/convince-others-against-dark-patterns/

The web has become a noisy place with millions of companies trying to get users’ attention. No wonder many of them apply increasingly desperate techniques to encourage users to act on their websites. We’ve seen an explosion of dark patterns attempting to manipulate users into handing over personal data or make a purchase. However, these manipulative techniques come with hidden costs in customer service, maintenance, support, return processing fees, and social media backlash.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/encouraging-clicks-book-pre-release/

This article is for anyone who works with typography, in any medium, and it is especially for those designers who are keen to give users the best reading experience possible. Jeffrey Zeldman once said: “90% of design is typography. And the other 90% is whitespace.” You might be knowledgeable about typefaces; you might regularly modify the leading, tracking, and kerning of your fonts; you might optimize the file sizes of your web fonts — but is that all that can be done?

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/micro-typography-space-kern-punctuation-marks-symbols/

In this era of software development, JavaScript can be used to develop almost any type of app. However, the fact that JavaScript is dynamically typed could be a concern for most large enterprise companies, because of its loose type-checking feature. Fortunately, we don’t have to wait until the Ecma Technical Committee 39 introduces a static type system into JavaScript. We can use TypeScript instead. JavaScript, being dynamically typed, is not aware of the data type of a variable until that variable is instantiated at runtime.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/typescript-modern-react-projects-webpack-babel/

In this tutorial, you’ll be building a Survey App, where we’ll learn to validate our users form data, implement Authentication in Vue, and be able to receive survey data using Vue and Firebase (a BaaS platform). As we build this app, we’ll be learning how to handle form validation for different kinds of data, including reaching out to the backend to check if an email is already taken, even before the user submits the form during sign up.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/vue-survey-app-firebase-authentication-database/

Lean, agile, do more with less. Again, and again, design culture urges us to move quickly and trim research and design operations to the point where design becomes a mere thread in the larger corporate spool. Author and designer Nikki Anderson explains the consequences of this pressure to conduct research at lightning speed: “When we’re asked to synthesize at the speed of light, user research becomes a way for teams to take a shortcut — to invent assumptions based on quickly made correlations, opinions, and quotes.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/reducing-design-risk/

About six years ago, a colleague I’ll call Tom, because that’s his name, forwarded me a link to the ‘WASD CODE’; a keyboard focused on the needs of programmers, designed with the help of Stack Overflow’s Jeff Atwood. I had no idea at the time that there were people actually dedicating themselves to creating keyboards beyond the stock fare shipping with computers. As I read and re-read the blurb, I was smitten.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/complete-guide-mechanical-keyboards/

In these strange times when everything is connected, it’s too easy to feel lonely and detached. Yes, everybody is just one message away, but there is always something in the way — deadlines to meet, Slack messages to reply, or urgent PRs to review. Connections need time and space to grow, just like learning, and conferences are a great way to find that time and that space. In fact, with SmashingConfs, we’ve always been trying to create such friendly and inclusive spaces.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/smashingconf-live-release/

In this episode of the Smashing Podcast, we’re talking about building apps on a tight timeline. How can you quickly turn around a project to respond to an emerging situation like COVID-19? Drew McLellan talks to Phil Smith to find out. Show Notes CardMedic React Native React Native for Web Expo Apiary Phil’s company amillionmonkeys Phil’s personal blog and Twitter Weekly Update Getting Started With Nuxt Implementing Dark Mode In React Apps Using styled-components How To Succeed In Wireframe Design Mirage JS Deep Dive: Understanding Mirage JS Models And Associations (Part 1) Readability Algorithms Should Be Tools, Not Targets Transcript Drew McLellan: He is director of the full-stack web development studio amillionmonkeys, where he partners with business owners and creative agencies to build digital products that make an impact.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/smashing-podcast-episode-15/

The Ionic Framework is an open-source UI toolkit for building fast, high-quality applications using web technologies with integrations for popular frameworks like Angular and React. Ionic enables cross-platform development using either Cordova or Capacitor, with the latter featuring support for desktop application development using Electron. In this article, we will explore Ionic with the React integration by building an app that displays comics using the Marvel Comics API and allows users to create a collection of their favorites.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/introduction-react-ionic/

The web is awash with words. They’re everywhere. On websites, in emails, advertisements, tweets, pop-ups, you name it. More people are publishing more copy than at any point in history. That means a lot of information, and a lot of competition. In recent years a slew of ‘readability’ programs have appeared to help us tidy up the things we write. (Grammarly, Readable, and Yoast are just a handful that come to mind.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/05/readability-algorithms-tools-targets/

It has been a month since we launched our first online workshop and, to be honest, we really didn’t know whether people would enjoy them — or if we would enjoy running them. It was an experiment, but one we are so glad we jumped into! I spoke about the experience of taking my workshop online on a recent episode of the Smashing podcast. As a speaker, I had expected it to feel very much like I was presenting into the empty air, with no immediate feedback and expressions to work from.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/04/new-smashing-online-workshops-css-accessibility-performance-ux/

Mirage JS is helping simplify modern front-end development by providing the ability for front-end engineers to craft applications without relying on an actual back-end service. In this article, I’ll be taking a framework-agnostic approach to show you Mirage JS models and associations. If you haven’t heard of Mirage JS, you can read my previous article in which I introduce it and also integrate it with the progressive framework Vue.js.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/04/miraje-js-models-associations/

May is here! And even though the current situation makes this a different kind of May, with a new routine and different things on our minds as in the years before, luckily some things never change. Like the fact that we start into the new month with some fresh inspiration. Since more than nine years already, we challenge you, the design community, to get creative and produce wallpaper designs for our monthly posts.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/04/desktop-wallpaper-calendars-may-2020/

For the most part, we tend to underestimate things that are familiar to us. It is also very likely that we will underestimate those things that though new, seem very simple to process. And that is correct to some degree. But, when we are faced with complex cases and all measures are taken, a good and solid understanding of the basics could help us to find the right solutions. In this article, we will take a deeper look at one of the most simple, thus, quite often underrated activities in web development that is the design of wireframes.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/04/wireframe-design-success/

One of the most commonly requested software features is dark mode (or night mode, as others call it). We see dark mode in the apps that we use every day. From mobile to web apps, dark mode has become vital for companies that want to take care of their users’ eyes. Dark mode is a supplemental feature that displays mostly dark surfaces in the UI. Most major companies (such as YouTube, Twitter, and Netflix) have adopted dark mode in their mobile and web apps.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/04/dark-mode-react-apps-styled-components/